May 2006

25 May 2006

The ASC is a group of anti-spyware software companies, academics, and consumer groups such as CAUCE. It seeks to bring together a diverse array of perspective on the problem of controlling spyware and other potentially unwanted technologies. It has created a common set of software behavior that can be characteristic of spyware, and is also working on consumer tips.

CAUCE joins its neighbor CAUCE Canada, already an ASC member, to work in the areas where anti-spam and anti-spyware efforts overlap, particularly in laws against fraudulent computer activity.
The problems of spam and spyware share the complicating factor that the same activity might be legitimate or not depending on whether the recipient has given permission. The identical mail from a mailing list could be legitimate to a recipient who'd asked for it but spam to a recipient who hadn't. Similarly, a program that remotely controls a user's web browser could be legitimate if used as a support tool with the user's consent, or spyware otherwise.

CAUCE looks forward to working with the ASC in areas of shared concern.

14 May 2006

Kodak settled a CAN SPAM suit with the FTC. Their Ofoto unit, which lets people upload digital photos and buy prints, sent two million commercial messages that didn't comply with the very mild requirements of CAN SPAM. In particular, they didn't include a notice that it was an ad, didn't include opt-out info, and didn't include Kodak's postal address. They paid the FTC $26,000, the revenue they got from the two million illegal messages.
Kodak claims (not altogether inplausibly) that it was a technical screwup. But $26K for two million messages does seem like a rather low response rate, doesn't it?

Reuters reports that a UK appeals court ruled that an English 18-year old who sent five million spams to a company who had fired him had indeed broken the law. The judge said that "while a computer user might consent to being sent some e-mails, that consent did not extend to receiving a barrage of such messages."
This may seem obvious, but it wasn't to a lower court, which now has to reconsider the case and what penalty to assess.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060511/wr_nm/crime_britain_spam_dc